Multithreading and Multicore Architectures

The present-day CPUs can usually house more than 31 instructions in the pipeline because some of them are taking parallel paths. That means more than one instruction per clock cycle is executed and you have a super scalar CPU. Doubling the clock speed gets you more than twice the number of instructions [...]

a Pipeline Story

The pipeline is one of those CPU fundamental features which enable several other very important speed-up schemes. Keep in mind that the pipeline architecture wasn’t introduced until 1989, so the previous CPUs had more “primitive” ways to deal with processing problems.
CPUs have to get instructions and data out of the memory [...]

about RISC and CISC

Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) CPUs were introduced by a series of companies that liked to keep the instruction sets very simple. This was due to the belief that the RISC architecture could make the microprocessor perform faster by incorporating many reduced instructions.
Intel and AMD chose to stick to the CISC [...]

In The Beginning, There Was MMX

In 1997, Intel introduced their MMX feature with the Pentium II microprocessor. This is a trade name for Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) capability. The MMX special instruction set was primarily aimed at the emerging complex multimedia features. 3D graphics processing stormed the second half of the previous decade and Intel [...]

a Little Story About Multitasking

Intel’s 386 was the first CPU to feature hardware and special instructions that supported true multitasking. Nowadays, it is common to see several applications running simultaneously. But this is only an apparent thing, as no more than one program can be executed at any particular time. This is due to the blazing fast speeds of [...]

CPU-Memory Interaction

We still haven’t figured out how the microprocessor can keep track of all that memory capacity that put your wallet in some difficulty. To answer that, we need to talk about some of the components of a microprocessor. It’s time to zoom in inside the CPU and start looking for those legendary [...]

Inside a Motherboard

Ever wonder what’s inside your motherboard?? Well, here we go:
The motherboard’s primary goal is to house the computer’s CPU chip and grant every other component quick access to it. Everything you see in your computer is somehow connected to the motherboard. Motherboards also have a standard form factor, but I consider this [...]

Operating System: File Operations

The OS provides systems calls to create, write, read, reset, and delete files. The following discusses the [...]

File System: NTFS or FAT

You can choose between three file systems for disk partitions on a computer running [...]

Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

Microsoft has a number of shortcuts. Below are some of my favourite shortcuts, the less commonly known, but very useful shortcuts.
SHIFT+DELETE  Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin
Windows Logo  Display or hide the Start menu
Windows Logo+BREAK  Display the System Properties dialog box)
Windows Logo+D Toggle to show desktop (minimize all [...]